


Do what you have to do

by falseisthistale



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon, Sad, but also THERE'S HOPE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 13:05:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3121232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falseisthistale/pseuds/falseisthistale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You were a difficult man to find, dread wolf.”</p>
<p>It has been three years since the Inquisitor’s fight against Corypheus. And yet her work had only just begun. Searching for information in her quest to bring about a better future, Lavellan uses her bound to seek Mythal, and finds someone else instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do what you have to do

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of a larger fic that I'm writting, but serves as a stand-alone. Lavellan has been working with Dorian and other mages to find a way to use the bound to her advantage, she has figured out who Solas is and suspects they may have antagonistic courses. 
> 
> (Also, yes, my Inquisitor is named Abelas. I JUST COULDN'T LET IT GO.)

“You were a difficult man to find, dread wolf.”

Abelas stood facing him, one foot still close to the eluvian. Her tone had been mocking, her lips almost shaping into a grin, but eventually settling for nothing all, dead and empty.  _Safer this way_ , she thought.

He hadn’t bothered hiding his surprise. For a moment he seemed petrified, his mouth slightly ajar. She tried to imagine the questions running through his head: How had she found him, how did she know, what did she come here for; but it was a dangerous thing to glance inside his head, to examine him so closely she might figure him out. She could not do it. Not like this. Not when she was so… unprepared.

“Lavellan.” He said, perhaps out of things to say. Perhaps to concede to her the first move, either out of deference or defense. It was not appreciated, and yet it had to be taken for the silence to be broken. “It’s been a long time.”  _And it should have been longer._

Solas did not disagree with her. “You should not have done this.” One of the few things they could still agree on, even after all that had happened. “Nothing good will come out of it.” It wasn’t hard to believe him. His face looked ragged, whatever good disposition that had previously been found in him had been laid waste. He had noticeable bags under his eyes, presumably from lack of sleeping; the last thing one would ever expect to see on him. It was certainly not the look of someone looking forward for an argument with a jilted ex-lover. 

It was, however, something that Abelas could use to her advantage. Easier that he looks so unrecognizable, _easier to look at him and not see him._ It was not as if she hadn’t been caught by surprise too. She shouldn’t had been, of course, she thought now in hindsight. There were a million ways their plan could have gone wrong, and yet this particular result had not crossed her mind at all. Perhaps she had been so resigned to the fact that he could not possibly ever have been found if he didn’t wish to be so, that she could not outwit him. A dangerous way to think, especially now.

“Yet here I am. Shall we make the best of it?”

Humor as cover, too weak to ever work against him.  _Varric has been rubbing off on me._ At the very least her tone had been serious; at least her face had slipped into a mask of disdain.

Perhaps he sensed her coiling, how all of her muscles had tensed not unlike an animal about to attack, and so Solas decided to not engage on that vein. “ _How_  did you find me?”

How unfair of him to ask questions. How unkind to want to hold all the answers and give nothing in return. How typical. She almost considered ignoring him, but there were answers she wanted as well. “Ironically enough, I wasn’t even seeking you.” Something vague enough to kick-start his mind, “You were always a sly one. So tell me, dread wolf. How is it that I found you?” It was a game she was familiar with by now, this back and forth, still the daily bread of the world’s politics. Give as little as you can, take as much as possible.  _Whatever answers you hope to find, you’ll need to wrench them out of him, trick him into telling you._ Nonetheless, he wasn’t a familiar adversary in this game. Probably not an easy one either.

He picked up after a moment, like she knew he would. “The well, of course…” There was a slight change to his poise: a shake of the head, a slight chuckle. “And you call  _me_  sly.”

“I never said you were the only one with such a quality.”

_So, it was the bound. So, we were right. And if he has figured it out this quickly, then he must know I would be seeking Mythal instead of him. How?_ It was hard, trying to pick up a thread through the wrong end. To start with the conclusions you lack.  _Why would my connection with Mythal lead me to him, and why would he immediately assume it did? What has he done?_

The dalish took a step forward and the god a step backwards, as if he had already calculated a certain distance that must be kept between them at all times; she didn’t press her luck, betray his confidence and stood where she was. Whatever his reason was it would not be wise to challenge him. “Will you tell me how you reached that conclusion?”

“It may be something you would not wish to hear.”

“The truth often isn’t. And usually that’s all the more reason to hear it.”

“Abel-”

“Don’t. If this is something that involves the bound I have to Mythal, then I deserve to know. You have to recognize as much.”

He faced her, lips slightly pressed, arms behind his back. “I can only theorize,” He had this way of looking at someone trying to say more with his gaze than his words. “It’s something I have given thought before, but had little way of confirming. It is a magic… unknown to me. I suspect it may run deeper than either of us can imagine, and its web cast more shadows than the immediate results we can perceive, however…” There was no easy way to say it, no beating around the bush,  _don’t even try,_ Abelas begged in her mind. “For now at least, I suspect whatever compelled you into Mythal’s will, compels you now to mine.”

“Ah.”

She had meant for it to be a sneer, and yet by the end it had transformed into a slight sob.  _It isn’t fair_ , the elf thought and perhaps the world had never been just and not just to her but,  _to go this far is not fair;_ and if it ever turned out to be true that there was something out there pushing threads and moving them along she was sure they were cruel,  _but alas, as long as they sing, we dance._

“Was the orb Corypheus had yours?” Abelas asked, “Why did you seek Mythal?” Solas asked at the same time. A silence stretched between the two of them until Abelas repeated her question, word for word.

“I have answered your question, do you deny me some answers of my own?”

“You could have answered a thousand more, dread wolf, and still it wouldn’t make us even.”

“A fair point.”

“So, was the orb yours?”

There was a pause when he seemed to consider his options, before he shifted ever so slightly, “Yes.”  _Ha, and he used to be so talkative._ She would get no more than that, but perhaps it wasn’t as needed as it seemed. He had obviously not been favorable to the way the orb had been used, and Abelas knew what the orb’s purpose had been, the rest she could figure out on her own. Something in her whispered that the only reason she had asked at all was personal,  _another piece of him that lies inside of me_ , it was a question that had plagued her for some time.

“Why did you seek Mythal?”

“It would hardly be smart of me to reveal that to you. You have enough advantages over me as it is.” 

When her words had finally sunk in, and his face distorted into frown that demanded further clarification from her. “It’s my belief we may run antagonistic to each other.” They had danced around the issue ever since their eyes had met and they’ve both had known it was true from the moment he had left, all those years back. “I didn’t ask you what you are planning, nor will I. It’s probably a waste of breath. You won’t tell me because I will try to stop you.”

Solas didn’t answer, nor did he repeat his question.  _Well, sometimes it’s silence that says everything you need to know._

“Well, I will try to stop you either way, even without knowing.” Again he didn’t answer and so she pressed on, “The thought that in your mind you will blame for not understanding, when you don’t even respect me enough to tell me what you know, sickens me. But I don’t need your coddling. If I find you are wrong, as I suspect I will, I will stop you.” It was a decision made so long ago that even now, looking at him, she felt no doubt over her own words.  _It’s not him_ , remember,  _you speak not to him but the dread wolf now and forever._ “I will stop you… That is, unless…” Abelas hesitated, what was next to come was a dangerous move, and yet she still needed to know.

“It would be easy for you to stop me. You wouldn’t even have to move a finger. Just say the words.” The atmosphere all around them changed, and suddenly the air was a little harder to breathe, the light a little harder to see. He looked like she had hit him. “No.” Was all he managed to say.

“Corypheus underestimated me, but you are better than him, smarter. It’s hard to think you would make the same mistake.” His head was shaking violently, his whole body focused in the denial of the very idea, “no”, “no”, “no”, he repeated over and over as Abelas spoke on and on and on. “I carry a dagger with me, stuck to the interior of my left boot. One sentence and it’s all over.” Words spoken with no emotion, frightening even to her. “I am bound to you. Don’t pretend this is something that doesn’t exist. The fact that this is a choice to you shows the power you have over me. Do you think I can ignore it? The moment I leave I will devote no small effort into countering it. And still no second will go past where I won’t wonder, when I won’t fear if this is the moment where I finally will have to pay the price for the choice I made.” It was a grave accusation coming from someone who, even now, still carried within her the pride of the dalish.

“I want you to know that you never have to fear me taking advantage of this. I want you to know that this is no light matter to me either.” Solas was speaking very fast now, rushing through words, so much to say before she cut him out. He knew, already then, she would cut him out. “I will find some way to undo this. This is the last thing I could ever have want-”

“Stop. You do this, you always do these things and it’s never-” a false start, a horribly emotional false start, something she would not do in front of him,  _not in front of the dread wolf,_  “You do this for your benefit, not mine. We stand on opposite sides of the battlefield and what? Do you expect me to rest easy, to do nothing? Do you expect me to trust you?”

The questions went unanswered, of course, what could he possibly say? He had taught her to mistrust over and over and it had been a lesson she had never really needed. They were alike in that regard; they had a relationship built on a neutral ground of secrets, a truce of not to pry. And it had ended as they both had expected it to end, even if the timing of it had been a surprise.

And yet, it still hurt to say it. She wondered if it hurt to hear it.

“Whatever your promises are, what difference do they make to me? What choice do I have?”

He closed his eyes, taking a moment too long to open them again. His voice sounded brittle, the first time Abelas had heard it in these three years. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s an emotional entanglement that would benefit neither of us. You do what you have to do.” She laid her hand on the frame of the great eluvian, one foot already crossing through it. “Just know that I’ll do what I have to, too.” 


End file.
